A 17-year-old student shot outside Garfield High School on Thursday died at Harborview Medical Center, and police continue to search for the shooter.
Deputy Police Chief Eric Burden said at a press conference that the suspect is believed to be a male high school student.
Gunfire broke out in the school’s parking lot during lunch break, wounding a student who died at a hospital later Thursday.
“Traumatic is an understatement to describe what these kids are going through,” Mayor Bruce Harrell, a Garfield High School graduate, said at a news conference Thursday. “This is not the first shooting in Garfield. These kids deserve better.”
Thursday’s shooting came as the school year draws to a close at Garfield High School, where gun violence has been frequent and community members have called for local authorities to intervene.
In March, a student was shot while waiting for a bus outside the school. There was another shooting outside the school in October, and a series of non-student-involved shootings nearby last June led to increased security on campus.
Classes at Garfield will be canceled Friday and Monday. Support and wellness staff will be providing counseling at Nova High School on Friday.
Mayor Harrell on Thursday emphasized his commitment to working with community groups and reiterated his commitment to investing in crime-fighting technology. He said he is directing Seattle Police Department to step up patrols.
Interim Police Chief Sue Lahr said police will “redouble” their efforts in the Central District to ensure students and their families feel safe.
“We’re not here to do hard policing,” Rahr said at a news conference at the Mount Calvary Christian Center in the Central District. “We’re here to meet with the community and work with the community.”
The Seattle Public Schools website on Thursday linked to a page about Gun Violence Awareness Day, which falls on Friday.
“It is difficult every time we have to report an incident of gun violence on or near our school campus, but this message is the hardest yet to deliver,” Garfield Principal Tarrance Hart said in an email to families Thursday night. “I am deeply saddened by the violence occurring in our community and deeply troubled by the devastating impact it continues to have on our school.”
“No child should have to go through this. It’s too much,” said Jeff Scott, whose daughter is a freshman at Garfield High School. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do.”
He said it felt “surreal” to be deployed to a school after another shooting so soon after the previous one.
He said he felt a sense of relief when his daughter, a freshman at Garfield High School, emerged from school.
“It’s just a shock,” Melanie Skinner said as she waited for her daughter, a Garfield High School student, to come outside. “It’s become so common.”
Skinner said she helped organize protests calling for more intervention to prevent gun violence around schools after the March shooting. Skinner said she doesn’t want her daughter to return to campus. She will attend graduation, but Thursday was her last day at Garfield.
Skinner isn’t the only parent to make this decision: A Garfield High School mother and former police officer who attended to the victim after the shooting and performed CPR on him said she decided to pull her son out of school, KUOW reported.
Several parents, community members and city officials met outside the school Thursday evening.
Many expressed frustration that the district and city had not done more.
Victoria Beach, SPD’s public safety liaison officer, said they have discussed reintroducing school resource officers (police officers stationed at schools) to Garfield and have heard from students that they want a police presence.
“After the murder of George Floyd, we had parents and students who said to the school committee, ‘We don’t need school police,'” said Lt. Brandon James, who oversees community outreach. “The environment changes, the dynamics change … it’s time to rethink.”
Bishop Reg C. Witherspoon of Mount Calvary said he knows the victim’s family and that his heart is “devastated.” Bishop Witherspoon said the responsibility to turn the tide of rising gun violence rests not just with police but with the community. Staff from the youth violence intervention group Urban Family also attended Thursday’s news conference.
“We’re in the midst of an epidemic,” Witherspoon said. “We’re in danger of losing an entire generation of young people.”
Baden said officers responded to a call about a shooting at the school around 12:30 p.m. and found the boy on the ground. Officers applied chest coverage and administered first aid before Seattle Fire Department paramedics arrived and took the boy to Harborview Hospital, where he underwent surgery. Police later confirmed the boy died from his injuries.
Baden said investigators found that a 17-year-old boy had been trying to break up an “altercation” between two boys before the shooting. A short time later, one of the boys “was clearly upset” and got into an argument with the victim before opening fire and fleeing the scene.
Police have not identified or located the suspect, who was wearing a red sweatshirt, light blue jeans and white sneakers and fled on foot.
Baden said police “flooded” the area where witnesses saw the suspect flee, but were unable to find him.
Detectives are reviewing surveillance footage and interviewing witnesses. Baden urged anyone with information about the shooting or the identity of the suspect to call 206-233-5000.
“This is a tremendous tragedy for our community,” Baden said. “Protecting our young people is our community’s number one priority.”
Garfield High School sophomores Serafina Alberoto, 16, and Meryem Roba, 16, were buying lunch nearby when they saw seven Seattle Police Department patrol cars speeding toward their school.
At 12:32 p.m., Roba’s brother, a first-grader, called her and asked her to walk back to school.
“He said, ‘Don’t come, don’t come. The whole school is on lockdown,'” Roba said. “He was panicking.”
Roba and Alberoto said they felt numb after the shootings became so common in the area around their school. From patio chairs outside the school, they pointed out the spot where the most recent shooting occurred.
“We feel anxious. Imagine if it was one of us,” Roba said.
“It could be any one of us at any time,” Alberoto said.
Sophomores at Garfield High School said students are struggling mentally and some are being drawn into gangs. Their social media posts often show classmates posing with guns, they said.
Students said counselors are so busy that appointments with school therapists are rare.
“We need to give them hope for the future, because if they think they’re going to die at 25, why not do this?” Roba said, pointing to the crime scene tape.
Garfield College students, faculty and staff have faced the threat of gun violence on and near campus for decades.
Since the 1990s, Seattle schools have seen about five incidents of gun violence on campus, two of which occurred at Garfield High School: in 1994, a student pulled a gun during a cafeteria fight and opened fire, wounding two students, and in 2008, a teenage gang member from a rival gang shot and killed a Garfield student behind the school.
Michelle Martin, a first-grade teacher at Stevens Elementary School and the parent of a 16-year-old sophomore at Garfield High School, said she rushed to the school when she heard about the shooting.
Martine stood behind yellow crime scene tape and yelled at officers gathered next to the school to close it down on Friday.
“Don’t let the kids come back here. It’s cruel,” she cried. “There’s no school for the rest of the year.”
Martin said she taught the 17-year-old girl who was shot outside Garfield High School in March. Her son was a friend of the girl and was standing next to her when the shooting happened, but the bullet came within inches of hitting him, Martin said.
Martin said her son doesn’t want to miss school or time with his friends, but has been afraid to walk to Garfield since then.
Martin said Garfield High School did not close the day after the shooting nearly two months ago. He said early Thursday afternoon that he hopes the district will close schools Friday or for the rest of the year to protect students.
“As a teacher and as a parent, my job is to keep kids safe,” she said. “I don’t want to see my kids end the school year dead on the ground.”
Seattle Times reporters Dalia Bazaz and David Gutman contributed to this report.
